


Dear Ed

by SonjaJade



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Fatherly Advice, Gen, Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 18:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10471218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonjaJade/pseuds/SonjaJade
Summary: When Ed and Al return after the Promised Day, Ed finds a letter waiting for him... from Hohenheim.





	

It was the last thing Ed expected to find waiting for him when he returned home.  In the bedroom the brothers shared at the Rockbell house, there was an envelope on each bed, one addressed to Alphonse, and one to himself… from their father.  For a moment, Ed was irate that the bastard had something he wanted to say.  They were right there, side by side!  Why couldn’t he have said it to them then!?  
   
But then he remembered the look on Hohenheim’s face as Ed and Al were reunited in flesh: he had the look of someone on the outside looking in.  He knew he didn’t belong with his sons, despite Al’s forgiving acceptance of his father’s absence, even going so far as to call him ‘Dad’, something Ed vehemently refused to do.  Maybe there _was_ something he needed to say after all, some kind of explanation or apology, something heavy he just couldn’t give a voice to; he knew he was dying and he knew where he wanted to die, and so he had to get going anyway.  
   
“Brother..” Al began.  
   
“It’s alright,” Ed said calmly.  “I’m gonna read it.  He went through the trouble of writing it, I can at least read what it has to say.”  He sat their suitcases down and took the envelope in slightly trembling hands.  He knew his father’s handwriting as well as his own, but it was the only time he could recall seeing his name written in the flowing, old fashioned looking script.  He looked up at Al, “Um, I think I wanna read it alone.”  He took the letter and left the room, climbing up the stairs to the attic at the end of the hall.  
   
Ed sat by the small window, where plenty of light shone in to illuminate the missive written to him by Hohenheim as he rode the train into Resembool.  He had no idea what to expect in the words, no idea what message he would find, but deep in his gut, he found he really wanted to know what it was his father couldn’t tell him in person.  
   
 _“My first born, my dear Edward,_  
   
 _I guess you’re scratching your head at this, probably cursing loud enough to wake the dead (which will soon include me), and you have every right I suppose.  I certainly was nowhere near the parent I should have been.  Perhaps if things had been different for me, if I hadn’t been born a slave, or if I hadn’t met your beautiful mother when I was already over four hundred years old…  It doesn’t matter.  While I may not have married your mother, I did love her dearly.  And while neither you nor your brother were planned, you too, were loved dearly.  I knew what could happen if I went to bed with Trisha._  
   
 _I will admit, once you came into the world, there was a lot I didn’t understand, and so much I had no knowledge of.  Here I was, immortal, already a walking library of information, and I had no idea at all how to deal with an infant or a mother with the ‘Baby Blues’.”_  
   
Ed sighed.  He couldn’t agree with his father more.  If Ed were to become a father this minute, he wouldn’t have the faintest idea either.  Then he kind of huffed.  “You coulda asked someone, idiot,” he muttered as he continued to read.  
   
 _“I felt more and more helpless with both of you.  I wanted so badly to be that kind of man and father who’s like one of those lions in the jungle, protecting and providing for his pride, but I just didn’t know how.  I had been a loner and a drifter, accustomed to caring for only myself.  I had no idea how to be a family man.  And when Alphonse came it was worse.  Now there was a toddler who could only say one or two words (but mostly screamed) and another baby, and a mother again with the Baby Blues left in the care of a man who was too dense to put down an alchemy book and pick up a parenting guide._  
   
 _Your anger and disappointment in me is just and deserved, and I won’t ever ask you to stop feeling that way toward me.”_  
   
Ed blinked, then reread the line again.  For the first time, he was seeing his father as just a man.  Hohenheim was a guy who had problems, just like anyone else.  He was just a guy who had the best of intentions but no idea how to execute them, like so many others Ed himself had met over the years.  For the first time, Ed’s heart began to soften a little in regards to his father.  
   
 _“I decided to leave when you were old enough to begin helping your mother with Al.  At least she would have a little help, more than what I could offer.  I asked Pinako to help out as well, as a favor to me, and as you know she has gone above and beyond in this aspect._  
   
 _I suppose I should tell you why I left.  You don’t know it, but before the fall of Xerxes, I was just a man.  I didn’t consider myself an alchemist.  Sure, I studied to become one, but once I did, I found that honestly I didn’t need it.  I had already become used to living my life without transmutation circles.  I simply learned it because the little one in the flask said it would increase my station in life.  And if you could ask your mother, I only used it a handful of times when we were courting and in the time that we were a family.  It gave me some kind of satisfaction to know that even though I was talented with the art I’d studied hard to learn, I never abused it.  My thoughts were if I never used it, I_ couldn’t _abuse it. That, and once I met the thing in the flask in a clone of my body, I didn’t_ want _to use it, only performing it when absolutely necessary, like when I accidentally spilled my coffee and shorted out the radio._  
   
 _So my words to you are these: Don’t worry about how to live your life without your alchemy.  You will grow to be a much wiser and much happier man without it, I think.  You remind me so much of myself when I was your age (I can hear the cursing again), wanting to grab the world by the balls and be more than what you find yourself being at the moment.  Alchemy tends to makes its practitioners think they’re gods.  You are only human, and no matter what you find yourself doing in the future, never forget that._  
   
 _I am sorry we couldn’t spend the time together that we needed to spend.  I wish I could have been the father you both needed, and the husband that your mother deserved.  Just learn from my mistakes, and if you find yourself down the road facing fatherhood, put down the alchemy book (I know you’ll still be reading them), put your arms around your woman and your child and make them the center of your life.  Al says you’ve got a thing for Pinako’s granddaughter, she’s quite lovely. Make beautiful babies with her Ed, and just enjoy being alive._  
   
 _With love,_  
   
 _Van Hohenheim”_  
   
Ed’s burning cheeks were not from either embarrassment or anger…  His face was red with shame.  His father, a man he’d never had much respect for in the past, had laid the whole truth wide open for him to read.  He now knew why his mother was never mad for Hohenheim having left her, and he understood now at least part of the guilt that the man carried with him.   
   
His new found knowledge on the situation kept him up most of the night, and after Al had gone to sleep, Ed wandered outside, clipped some flowers from the flower bed out back and walked to the cemetery.  He laid the bulk of the daisies and other wildflowers on his mother’s grave, kissed his fingers and patted the headstone, as if to let her know he was home.  And then he laid the much smaller bouquet on the fresher grave of his father.  The engraving on the stone was much sharper and clearer than Trisha’s, and Ed touched the sharp lines of the letters with the sensitive fingers of his restored right hand.  
   
“Hey.”  He jammed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the flowers lying in the moonlight.  “I read your letter.  I just wanted you to know…  I still don’t like that you left, but at least I can learn from your mistakes.”  
   
Crickets chirped and the stars twinkled, and Ed began to feel stupid for standing in the dark talking to a chiseled slab of stone.  He moved to stand in front of his mother’s stone and said with a smirk, “Hey Mom, give Dad a good what-for for me and Al!”  Then he looked back at Hohenheim’s grave and said, “And Dad, do what you told me to do: wrap your arms around your woman and make her the center of your world.”  Ed strolled out of the graveyard with a soft smile, and a gentle breeze ruffled the blooms resting on the ground.  Somewhere on the other side of the Gate, two souls held each other tighter.


End file.
